The other day I was broiling a nice piece of fillet mignon (yes, I still eat meet eat once in a blue moon) and I was using aluminum foil on the pan. When I was done, almost instinctively, I curled the foil into a little ball and threw it in the garbage thinking not much could be done with the grease-covered film of metal.
I had to stop for a second and ask myself: “why did I just do that? did I have to throw it away? is it possible to recycle aluminum foil?”
I guess I never took the time to really find out if it could be done. After all, aluminum foil is usually so greasy and dirty after use that I always assumed you couldn’t recycle it. In any case, I made it a point to research the proper, eco-friendly way of handling used aluminum foil. The following is the result of my subsequent research.
Apparently, aluminum can be recycled many times over without losing much of its quality, as opposed to other materials – like plastic – that lose quality for every time they are recycled. Something else I found out is how energy intensive it is to create aluminum from the raw metal that is found in nature. In fact, recycling an aluminum can uses only about 5% of the amount of energy than making it from raw bauxite ore, which is the raw resource where aluminum comes from, and that doesn’t even include the toxic byproducts of the process of creating new aluminum. To get even more technical, it takes 229 BTUs of energy (energy measuring units) to make one ton worth of aluminum cans. It only takes 8 BTUs of energy to recycle the same ton of aluminum. Part of the problem is that on any given year the US only recycles anywhere from 40% to 50% of the aluminum produced.
So… can you put aluminum foil in the recycle bin? Well, I checked in the City of Seattle Recycling Services website and aluminum foil is on the DO NOT recycle list. I’m guessing they would rather refuse it rather than deal with dirty foil ruining batches. You may want to check with your local recycling service if you’re not in Seattle, since there may be other places that will take them.
But if you are in Seattle, or another city that refuses aluminum foil, that still leaves the question of what can we do about it. Well, one option is to use 100% recycled aluminum foil, which does not entirely convince me since it will end up in the landfills anyways. The other, more eco-friendly way of handling this is to just rinse it and reuse it, but you can only do this once or twice before having to throw it away… and it’s also a pain in the behind.
I’m almost positive there is a way to recycle aluminum foil as long as it is rinsed, and I’m going to find out how and where I can do that. I will follow up with part two of this post once I find out.
Please comment on this post with your ideas, or if you know what to do with aluminum foil that helps the environment.
Rafa
Here are more resources worth checking out.
The Aluminum Association
A great Grist.org article
Handling instructions for different metals in Washington
http://www.solidwastedistrict.com/stats/aluminum.html
I have been considering this problem for some time. I stopped using aluminium foil for cooking some years ago, and if a dish requires to be wrapped in foil, use leaves such as cabbage or banana instead.
So I don’t have to worry about it. However, the amount of aluminium foil that comes into my house still astounds me. I make sure that I save the foil from chocolates, the seal layer in some tinned goods and so on and keep adding them to a foil ball.
I do not put aluminium into the recycle bin, but take it direct to the scrap metal merchants. Currently I get $9.00 a kilo for it, and this takes about a year to collect.
Here in South Australia we have deposits on the sale of soft drinks – including flavoured milks and fruit juice – and the return of all containers one gets a 10 cent refund. Thus although there are those who throw their cans away, the recycling rate for these items here is about 90%.
Denise,
Thanks for the comment. I like the advise of the cabbage leaf. I’m going to have to try that. I also like the part of saving it and then taking it to the scrap metal place for some added $$. I will have to start trying that.
It’s amazing that you guys are up to 90% recycling on aluminum cans. Unfortunately I don’t think we are anywhere near that here on the US.
Again, thanks for the comment, and feel free to drop by again.
Rafa
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
Coll blog.
Thanks, webmaster.
Hi
As a fresh seattlegreenobserver.com user i only want to say hello to everyone else who uses this site B-)
Recycling is very very important in order to preserve mother earth.:*: